In the gaming industry, most gaming machines currently on the market have only one host communication port with which to communicate with a system host. System hosts communicate with gaming machines for a variety of reasons, including by way of example only, and not by way of limitation, tracking player activity, tracking accounting information, and the like. However, it is becoming increasingly desirable to be able to connect a gaming machine to more than one system host, in order to utilize the capabilities of more than one system host, concurrently. Accordingly, gaming machines with only a single host communication port cannot connect to more than one system host. Therefore, owners of these single port gaming machines currently must select a single system host that will be connected to the gaming machines at any given time. In this manner, gaming machines with a single host communication port are more limited in their connectivity than gaming machines with multiple host communication ports.
For example, most slot machines today are single port machines that connect to a system host through their single communication port. Typically, this system host tracks player and accounting information, as well as performing other minor related tasks. Additionally, other hosts exist that include capabilities such as ticket printing. A ticket printing system enables a gaming machine to print tickets that a player may exchange for cash instead of dispensing cash directly to the player. Thus, casino owners may desire to connect their gaming machines to both an accounting system host and a ticket-printing host. Currently, however, only gaming machines that have at least two communication ports can connect to both an accounting system host and a ticket-printing host, simultaneously.
Importantly, gaming machines as currently constructed, are designed as dedicated devices with exactly the number of inputs and outputs required for their particular purpose. Thus, when a second or third communication port is required, an entire new hardware board design must be produced, which can be an expensive and time-consuming task. Connectivity devices, such as USB, SCSI, and Firewire, that are used to provide personal computers (“PCs”) with an interface to peripherals, (e.g., scanners, printers, CD-ROM drives, and the like) cannot be used to connect gaming machines to system hosts because these devices do not communicate using a protocol that is compatible with that used by gaming machines and hosts. Furthermore, simple splitting and “daisy chaining” techniques, which are used in the PC industry, also cannot be used with gaming machine host communication ports.
Thus, today's gaming machines are not like PCs that can be expanded with plug in cards. In contrast, a typical gaming machine has a fixed number of communication ports, each which is permanently assigned to a specific function, including by way of example only, and not by way of limitation, systems communication, progressive jackpot communication, and perhaps, bill acceptor communication. Accordingly, when a system host with ‘ticket printing’ capabilities was developed, most gaming machines did not have the extra serial port needed for connecting to this host. Thus, the purchase of a new multi-port system was required in order to connect the ticket printing host, as well as the existing system host.
Moreover, communication with a system host or ticket-printing host is a demanding job for current gaming machine software. Today's gaming machines are design to handle communicating with one system host. Accordingly, adding the workload of a second system host for ticket printing capabilities is a daunting task for existing software.
Accordingly, those skilled in the art have long recognized the need for a system that enables a gaming machine having a single host communication port to function as a gaming machine having multiple communication ports, thereby enabling the gaming machine with one communication port to communicate with more than one system host simultaneously. Such as system would allow owners of single port gaming machines to extend the useful life of such machines, and not require these owners to purchase new multi-port machines in order to obtain the benefits of connecting to more than one system host simultaneously. Further, a gaming machine having the single port could also be connected to a system host and one or more peripheral devices that might also require communication with the gaming machine. The present invention clearly addresses these and other needs.